Have you noticed that I’ve got a new look? No, I haven’t had a sex change – I’m still the finest non-Asian Drag King from Slough.
Maybe you noticed that the pages had broken – nobody could access the to-do list, league table or maps. No, you didn’t notice?
Well, the website was fucked anyway. I spent hours trying to work it out and concluded that it was just easier to find a new theme. Some of my old features are not yet working so there will be a few imperfections for a while. Not that you ever noticed. It’s a miracle that you even read this shite in the first place. Then again, I read the same adverts on the tube for around 10 hours a week so maybe I break up the monotony of your life.
Anyway, it looks pretty doesn’t it? Albeit it looks like around 60,000 other equally pointless blogs out there using the same theme as I am. At least I don’t have blond hair extensions yet.
One day I am going to make something unique with my web developer skills, but I’m skint so need to prioritise client work. Not that I have any clients coming up…so if anyone knows anyone who wants a website, do let me know.
Or if you want to pay me for sexual favours, I would oblige, depending on your gender and attractiveness. Actually scrap attractiveness, I’m really skint.
So this week I…
Hang on. I’ve had a moment of genius
Do you reckon I could charge £20 to replicate this:
Any takers? £15 perhaps? Plus 12.5% service charge. We could share the bread after.
Have you ever seen the woman that rolls her face in loaves of bread? I will get to where I went for a roast dinner soon…in fact there is a brilliant segue coming, totally accidentally brilliant. Anyway, this is my favourite video of hers so far:
Just how sexual is that?
Speaking of bread…you are so going to love this seque…this week I went to The Windmill…get it? In Clapham. In…The Triangle of Roast Doom.
Dum dum dummmmmmmmm.
Incidentally, I’ve just done a search on YouPorn for bread…I’ll try to be as family-friendly as possible here, but let’s just say there is a video with a woman and a baguette. Shall we talk about Brexit? Hi everyone!
The Windmill in Clapham is a rather large pub (and hotel) taking up a chunk of Clapham Common, the park that holds the largest headphone-free silent disco in the world every August Bank Holiday.
Not only large, but busy. Buzzy busy – and my first impressions on entering a loud, standing-room only pub looking for a nice, quiet roast dinner were not altogether complimentary. Walking around the bar, we came to a queue to be seated which didn’t take an extraordinary amount of time to get seated, but we did wait a little bit. Our dining partners who arrived after us were advised that the table wasn’t ready.
Thankfully the restaurant area wasn’t so full – well, all the tables were occupied or expecting, but there weren’t large groups of people stood around being noisy. We were seated in the conservatory section – I had counted four sections to what is really a very large pub.

Service wasn’t especially forthcoming and when I attracted the attention of a nearby waitress to place a drinks order, the feeling we got was that we were an impediment as opposed to a customer – a feeling duplicated when we later placed our food order. Miserable cow. On the bright side, they sold Neck Oil which is such a glorious 568ml of liquid.
Options on the menu were horseradish glazed sirloin of beef at £19, lemon and thyme half a chicken at £18, pork loin at £18 – or a MEGA roast at £23, combining all three meats, including chicken thighs for the chicken – and thighs are the juiciest, most gorgeous part of a chicken. Chicken wings are shite by the way. THERE. And so are beards.

Anyone as intelligent as myself, and with the stomach capacity that I do should always seriously consider a MEGA roast. I put it out to my loyal twitter followers as to whether I should have the mega roast – 68% voted in favour, so given that I am remoaner scum, I decided to ignore the will of the people and have the pork loin, as the mega roast would have been too detrimental on my wobbly personal finances.
By the way, wouldn’t it be dreadful if Andrea Leadsom followed through on her threat to resign from the cabinet? How would the United Kingdom cope?
Our roasts took less than 15 minutes to arrive, with a pub so large and busy one assumes that there is quite the conveyor belt (hmmm a conveyor belt of roast dinners) and I looked deliriously aghast (that is a positive) at having pretty much a whole pork joint on the plate. Not just one thick slice of pork, but two. More on that later.

Oh by the way, there was some form of vegetarian option on the menu, but it came with “rich tomato gravy”….which sounds shite.
So, onto vegetables which I absolutely adore, and there was a smallish medley supplied. The carrots were the pick of the bunch, with just a little bit of crunch to them and a really fresh flavour – excellent carrots.
There were a few slices of roasted courgette, and perhaps a tiny bit of cabbage – but amounts were too minimal to affect upon my mind.
Also there was just one piece of cauliflower cheese, which was creamy rather than cheesy.
There was a real shortage of vegetables – given that I had a whole joint of meat on my plate I wasn’t complaining, but there was a certain lack of balance.

Remember the problems that I used to have, every single week, with roast potatoes? This was the 5th week in a row that I’ve had good roast potatoes. It appears that I’ve entered some rare golden age of crispy roast potatoes…a bit like Cleggmania of the roast potato world.
These were pretty crispy on the outside and tasted of the goose fat that they were cooked in. Reasonably soft in the middle too. Not perfect but pretty damn good. Fucking hell, I really miss David Cameron.
I did get a bad Yorkshire pudding though – somewhat burnt and tough to tear apart – it only detracted from my meal, and perhaps a little from my soul. A bit like the Moggmania of the Yorkshire pudding world? I think I’ll give up on using those…oh shit what’s the word I’m looking for?
Pork. I was astonished to get two thick slices of pork loin, totalling around 3cm in width – I had forgotten my ruler so that is a bit of an estimation. For my liking, it was a little overdone, just a little more effort than normal to slice the pork. It also wasn’t especially interesting – I was eating a lot of meat – woohoo – but I didn’t get an awful lot of taste out of it, without combining it with something else.
It was pretty ordinary. Just an extraordinary portion. I’ve actually had smaller roast dinners than the whole of the pork that was served.
The beef was commended by my two guests that ordered it, as was the mega roast – though personally I found the piece of beef that I had rather…ordinary. Nice but ordinary.


There was a good scattering of crackling too, all edible, all with a mixture of goo and not-inconsiderable crunch – yet I still have the same amount of teeth that I had prior to the meal (7).
And there was a ball of stuffing – yet more pork, with some apple mixed in. Oh why ruin something savoury with fruit? Apart from that, it was a fine ball of sausagemeat-style stuffing.
The gravy was good too. Some relative consistency with a general meat stock feel – tasty without being overbearing. Extra gravy was forthcoming upon request and sufficient extra gravy actually turned up. A long way from the divine gravy I made myself on Saturday night, but above average.
Overall that would sum up the roast dinner at The Windmill. Above average but a long way from divine. I was more wowed by the portion size than the flavour, and thought the balance was a little out of shape – I cannot quite believe that I am saying this, but more vegetables would have been ideal.
The vegetables were probably the nicest part of the meal, though there was plenty of good aspects. The only really troubling part was the burntish yorkie.
You’ll be satisfied if you have a roast dinner, but there are plenty of more interesting venues and Sunday roasts around. That said, there are plenty of shit roast dinners in the area…it isn’t known as the Triangle of Roast Doom for nothing.
Apart from the one miserable cow, the service was reasonably good – as good as they could provide whilst seemingly rushed off their feet. Apparently a lot of restaurants in London are struggling to find waiting staff at the moment…I’m struggling to think of something that might have caused that though. There was no service charge either – we tipped but tightly, given our earlier disappointment.
I’m going to give The Windmill a healthy 7.47 out of 10. Though I’ve just realised that only half my roast dinners are on my league table. Urgh…more fixing.
I’ll be back on Sunday, assuming I don’t get stabbed at the remoaner-fest on Saturday for being a Tory…if I can be arsed to go…to the remoaner-fest that is. I’m really quite excited for this upcoming roast dinner, it isn’t somewhere that really gets talked about and it is somewhere I had forgotten was on my list. It has a daily-changing menu and really looks quite unique. It could be special.
I agree with Nick.

Summary:
The Windmill, Clapham
Station: Clapham Common
Tube Lines: Northern
Fare Zone: Zone 2
Price: £18.00
Rating: 7.47
Loved & Loathed
Loved: Carrots were excellent and roast potatoes actually good too.
Loathed: Pork was bang ordinary - yorkie was somewhat burnt and tough to tear apart.
Where now, sailor?
Random roast review: Fox And Anchor, Barbican
